The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!: Pageantry and Patriotism in Cold War America Book

This cultural history explores a part of America's recent past almost too strange to be true, although some will remember it firsthand: the Cold War at the grassroots level.

Richard M. Fried begins with the nationwide sanctification of the American flag and the widespread, if occasionally coercive, acceptance of the Pledge of Allegiance. He then describes how organizations such as the Ad Council and the American Heritage Foundation created "campaigns to sell America to the Americans" through carefully constructed "rededication" celebrations like Know Your America Week and Freedom Week, as well as traveling exhibitions like the Freedom Train, which brought original copies of seminal American documents to exhibit halls across the US. Fried also revisits the 1950 "Communist invasion" of Mosinee, Wisconsin--a staged media event sponsored by the American Legion--in which citizens let themselves be searched at random while local officials acted as Stalinists and area restaurants were required to serve only potato soup and black bread. Meticulously researched and colorfully told, this book recreates a captivating--and revealing--dimension of our history.